Setting the Stage I am in a hotel room with three millennials: Grace, 24, Gabriel, 22, Glorie, 20. An argument is raging: How can I be civil with people who support evil? I know that’s harsh. Is your neighbor who voted for Trump evil? I’ll say no. But these young people are having none of it. […]
Current Events in Education
Posted inAdult Learning
The Politics and Pedagogy of Immigration Policy
The national debate over the Trump Administration policy of separating children from their parents at the southern border has reached a fever pitch. Images and audio of crying children, traumatized by the removal of their parents to detention facilities while the children are detained in what amounts to cages, have preoccupied the national media and gripped […]
Posted inAdult Learning
2018: Reflections on a School Year
It’s the Saturday after the last day of school for teachers. I am turning 58 today. I just completed my 34th year as a social studies teacher. Tomorrow is Father’s Day. Looking back over the past year and over the arch of my career, I want to write about the struggles and successes of my […]
Posted inOpinion
Rat Infestations, Permanent Voice Damage, & Grieving In the Classroom : Reflections on the Absolute WORST YEAR of My Teaching Career
This has been the absolute worst year of my teaching career. By far . . . It started too early—much too early. Our teacher meetings began on August 14th. Whatever, you may ask fellow teachers, ever happened to the Tuesday after Labor Day serving as the year’s genesis? Anyone who has spent any time in […]
Posted inAdult Learning
American Values In the Classroom and Community: Where do we stand as a nation today?
As a teacher and American citizen, it is difficult to discern what values we stand for as a nation today. It seems that our government has blurred the lines between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, equality and discrimination, and honesty and scandal. In the pendulum swing from the “post-racial” Obama years to the quasi-authoritarian […]
Posted inHow to Fix Education
In Defense of Standardized Testing: A Reflection
Standardized testing: just the thought of these assessments strikes terror in the hearts of teachers. If only our students cared as much about how they score on state-mandated tests. Most of the educational literature reflects a negative view of standardized testing, but they serve an important purpose in American education: to indicate teacher effectiveness through […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
A School Boycott Isn’t the Way To End Gun Violence
On this suggested school boycott-let’s be serious. In The Atlantic, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suggested a massive nationwide school boycott to pressure our leaders into action to address gun violence. But a boycott of schools is not the way to pressure unwilling establishment leaders for better gun laws, and it is a shame that people considered to […]
Posted inAdult Learning
The Royal Wedding: Why Should We Care? One American Teacher’s Perspective
The news broke this morning: another school shooting, this time in Santa Fe, Texas. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to entertain the thought that this most recent massacre is the 22nd school shooting this year. I can’t bear to think that ten more families will be planning funerals and that […]